Peccadilloes in Nippon and in Nipponese with a Quixotic Perspective. Coming at you from Yokohama, near Tokyo.

April 17, 2007

Which is more complicated, Japanese or English?

Every once in a while, a Japanese person will pose this question to me. They always seem flabbergasted that I think English is more complicated. Actually, I try to clarify that I think English is much easer to learn. Learning Japanese often feels like learning four or five languages at once. To learn Japanese, you have to cover:

Two sylaballaries

about 2,000 standard Chinese characters

maybe about 1,000 more if you want a specialized job

stroke order, if you want to be able to write

the multiple readings for Chinese characters

the local dialect

familiarity with major dialects

slang

common punchlines

old Japanese is a plus

idioms are a plus

Humble, middle, and honorific language

How to juggle in-group to out-group speech

Katakana words from other languages

Learning which words are too technical/archaic to be used (often after you have already memorized them).

So I think it's a challenge to learn Japanese in the first place. But I still think the grammar is ridiculously simple. Only two verbs in the entire language are irregular. The spelling is fairly simple. And most of the elements reinforce each other. I am actually thankful for kanji, cause sometimes it's the only way I remember a word's meaning, and there can be nice nuance communicated through them (見るvs.観る for example).Anyways, I don't really think I need to go into why English is harder. But I will share this link with you. Maybe you'll see my point through it.